


These So-Called Vacations

by Havendale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canada, Case Fic, Dean Winchester Has Anger Issues, Enemies to Friends, Gabriel Lives (Supernatural: Exodus), M/M, More Like Grudging Allies to Slightly Less Grudging Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28912026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havendale/pseuds/Havendale
Summary: Post-Season 13. Gabriel, for reasons of his own, has decided to join the Winchesters on a vampire hunt up in Canada. Dean is less than thrilled.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Gabriel & Dean Winchester, Gabriel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	These So-Called Vacations

**Author's Note:**

> Assumes a vague post-Season 13 AU in which Dean was never possessed by Alt!Michael, Lucifer and Alt!Michael were both dealt with, and our heroes are all alive and well. Ignores all subsequent canon. Unrelated to my other SPN fic, but incorporates a headcanon of mine re: Gabriel’s escape from Lucifer which also turns up in [Your Ghost Inside My Head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27129058/chapters/66248110).
> 
> I don’t give detailed warnings for longer fic (I don’t want to risk leaving something out), but one quick heads-up – Dean’s views on therapy and mental health are his, not mine. 
> 
> Title from “Home for a Rest” by Spirit of the West. 
> 
> Loving thanks as usual to B. for beta-reading.

One afternoon in mid-November, when the ground was powdered with the first snow of the season, Dean came home with two tickets to the Pliny Community Theatre production of _All My Sons_. He hadn’t been planning on buying the tickets. He’d driven out to Pliny with plans to pick up a month’s worth of ground beef and frozen vegetables and bread and a couple of Twix bars for Jack. (For their weekly grocery runs they went to the little place in Lebanon, but it didn’t take credit cards, and they couldn’t afford to blow all their cash in one go.) But when he saw the Formica folding table set up at the entry to the supermarket, with the poster tacked to the front, something – the Spirit of Christmas, or possibly temporary insanity – came over him. He wasn’t, when he paid his sixteen dollars, really thinking about the play itself. He was thinking about reading Arthur Miller one week in ninth grade when he’d been sentenced to lunchtime detention in the library, and about Cas. About driving to Pliny again with Cas in the passenger seat. 

He also wasn’t thinking about the possibility that, as soon as he came down the stairs into the war room, Sam would be waiting to help him with the groceries. Or that Sam would immediately fish the tickets out of the bag into which Dean had shoved them. “What are these?” he said.

“Tickets.”

“Yeah. I see that.” Sam squinted. “Since when are you into community theatre?”

And that was when Dean’s mouth, which had been, Dean had to admit, a real goddamn champion to get through “I’ll take two” and “Cash” and even “Yes, seated together” without clamming up, let down the side. It said, without any prompting from Dean himself, “I’m not. Obviously.”

“Right,” said Sam. “They fell into your bag.”

“They’re for you,” said Dean’s mouth. In a remote corner of his brain, Dean wondered what was happening and how to stop it. But it was too late. The train had left the station: it was steaming down the line. “Thought you could take the kid out. You know, cheer him up.”

Now Sam was looking at him sort of softly. He said, “That was nice of you.”

The corner of Dean’s brain didn’t think it was that nice at all. It thought that a pair of theatre tickets, while it might have made for a fun date, was actually kind of a crappy way to cheer somebody up in the circumstances. _Sorry your dad turned out to be a dick like we all said and stole your powers and now he’s dead. Go see a play about somebody else’s dickhead dad._ But –

“Show’s at seven,” he said. The train sped past the station marked Point of No Return. “On the twenty-first.”

That evening, after dinner – after he had to sit through Sam explaining about Arthur Miller to Jack – he press-ganged Cas into helping him with the dishes. While they wiped and scrubbed and dried, he said, “Listen, Cas, this thing with Sam and Jack. It’s –”

“It’s a, uh, a bonding experience,” said Cas. “I understand.”

“Right,” said Dean.

Cas nodded. He looked a little misty-eyed.

“It’s important,” he said. “Reminding Jack that he’s special to each of us. That even if Lucifer only cared about him for his powers, we value him for who he is.” He patted Dean’s shoulder with a sudsy hand. “That’s what family means,” he said. 

Which was why, two months later, when Cas announced that he and Jack were going on a wyvern hunt in the Florida swamps – _just_ him and Jack – Dean couldn’t very well say no.

* * *

Before the wyvern hunt, however, came Gabriel.

Back in August, Dean and Sam had driven out to Cleveland (of all the places, Dean thought) in pursuit of a rumour about an insurance lawyer who’d dropped dead of a heart attack on the golf course at age thirty-one, a couple weeks after her neighbour had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and a month to the day from when her mother-in-law had suffered a massive stroke while cooking breakfast. It was a bitch of a hunt – one dead end after another, thanks to the lawyer’s husband, who hadn’t seen fit to spill the beans about the little ivory box he’d picked up on holiday in Rome: a nasty leftover from the Renaissance, it turned out, enchanted to kill anyone who touched it besides the rightful owner. They hadn’t figured it out till after Sam had picked it up and started coughing up blood a couple of days later. They’d destroyed the thing in time. But standing in the living room of Phil Kovalenko’s condo, listening to him whine about how he hadn’t thought his Italian souvenir was worth mentioning, couldn’t _possibly_ have suspected anything might be wrong with it, Dean had seen red, and before he knew what was doing he’d put his fist through the screen of Kovalenko’s TV.

Later, while they patched themselves up at the hotel, Sam had cornered him. “Look,” he’d said. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head. But man, you’ve gotta stop breaking shit whenever you get mad. This whole irrational rage thing you’ve got going on – you want Jack seeing that? Growing up like we did?” Dean, still jittery and hurting, had yelled at him that it was perfectly rational rage, and also Sam could go fuck himself. Sam snapped back that Dean wasn’t any more convincing when it came to denying his anger issues than when it came to denying his drinking problem. And then Dean threw the remote control at the wall, and then they got themselves kicked out of the hotel – it was a nicer one than they usually sprang for – and had to spend the night in the Impala.

After which Dean agreed to work on his so-called anger issues.

Like hell was he going to a shrink. Sam had suggested it, and Dean had pointed out that psychologists were for crazy people. But he’d been cooking four or five nights a week – he felt better when he did something with his hands – and working on his car, and when all else failed, he made himself count to ten in his head before he let himself lose it on someone. If you still wanted to yell at someone after ten seconds, he figured, they probably deserved it.

What it boiled down to was this: Sam had been dead. Again. Oh, sure, Lucifer had brought him back – and wasn’t that a fucking kick in the teeth, that Lucifer had saved his brother when Dean himself couldn’t – but he’d been _dead_. You could talk all you wanted about the risks of hunting – about making peace with the fact that you were doing okay as long as you saved more people than you lost. Dean hadn’t made peace with anything. Dean would, in fact, have given his eyeteeth if he could have talked Sam into staying in the Bunker and becoming a Man of Letters and spending his weekends doing macramé or sudoku or whatever people who weren’t hunters did with their free time. Not that Sam was ever going to go for that. But at very least, Dean wasn’t going to do anything that gave Sam a reason to put any kind of distance between them. If that meant drinking the self-improvement Kool-Aid, then so be it.

And hell, while he was at it, it’d be nice if he could call his mother without the two of them bitching at each other. Mary didn’t want to come back to the Bunker: she wanted to spend more time touring around California, hunting monsters and finding herself: fine. Dean could live with that. He made lasagna and beer-battered cod and sent stupid shit he found on the Internet to Mary, to make her laugh, and went out hunting with Sam and sometimes Cas and Jack too. And for the most part, as November rolled on into December, he thought he was doing okay. At least he hadn’t thrown anything else at the wall.

So it was a shame, he reflected, standing in the war room, staring at Gabriel, having counted to ten and then to twenty, that Sam was about to watch him strangle somebody with his bare hands.

Gabriel gave him a nasty smile. “That’s right, bucko,” he said. “It’s the Ghost of Christmas Past. You miss me?”

“Gabe, man –” Sam broke off. “Where have you been?”

It was, Dean thought, a fair question.

It was a good six months since any of them had seen Gabriel. The night after they’d dealt with Mike and Lucifer – the very same fucking night – they’d come back to the Bunker, got drunk on whatever booze they could scrounge from the cupboards, and gone to bed. And in the morning, Dean had shuffled into the kitchen and found the note on the table in Gabriel’s handwriting: _Off to Bora Bora w. R. See you around!_ Just for leaving him to be the one to explain that to Jack, Dean thought, Gabriel deserved a solid punch in the jaw.

“Oh, you know,” said Gabriel. “Here, there, everywhere.”

“And, uh – Rowena? She okay?”

“She’s swell,” said Gabriel, a little more gently than Dean would have expected. “Dropped her off in the French Riviera. You know how it is – some girls you can’t tie down. Uh, metaphorically speaking, anyway.”

“And you came back here,” said Sam. 

“Sure did. Just can’t stay away from you.”

Dean decided it was time to intervene. “You got a place to stay?” he said.

Gabriel’s eyes flicked back to him. “Haven’t made my reservations,” he said.

“Okay. Well, there’s hotels in the phone book.”

Sam said, “ _Dean_.”

Dean said, “ _Seriously_ , Sam? He runs off again, we don’t hear from him for months, and now he waltzes in here like he friggin’ owns the place. You –”

But that was when – just Dean’s fucking luck – he heard footsteps from behind him. And Jack’s voice – hopeful, disbelieving: “Uncle Gabe?”

So Gabriel ended up staying after all.

It could, Dean grudgingly admitted to himself, have been worse. As an ally, Gabriel had been just about barely tolerable. As a roommate, he – not to put too fine a point on it – sucked. He whistled in the hallways. He left candy wrappers in the library. Still – Dean had been afraid at first that they were letting themselves in for something between Alice in Wonderland and the world’s worst acid trip. Exhibit A: a guy who could rewrite reality just by snapping his fingers. Exhibit B: Gabriel’s total lack of anything resembling self-restraint. But no. Gabriel’s grace was still guttering like a candle in a draughty room, apparently. Good for candy bars and the occasional flight to Key West and not much else. This much he’d learnt from Sam, who’d taken him aside two or three days after Gabriel’s arrival for a hushed conversation in one of the spare bedrooms. The gist of which was: be nice, he’s sensitive about it.

Whatever. Sure: Gabriel was low on grace right now. But it’d restore itself in time – and sooner or later, Dean thought with a vaguely sick feeling, Gabriel would be bored of hanging out with Team Free Will, and juiced up enough to flit off to Tahiti or wherever, and they’d wake up to find another note on the kitchen table. And then Dean would get to break the bad news to Jack all over again.

Story of his fucking life. Cleaning up other people’s mess.

To his marginal credit, Gabriel seemed to have picked up on the fact that he wasn’t Dean’s favourite person. He gave Dean his space. He was never in the kitchen except at mealtimes, never in the garage at all. The thing was, nobody else seemed to want _any_ space from Gabriel. Hell: Jack _adored_ him. Good old Uncle Gabe. Dispenser of Three Musketeers bars and tall tales (“Hey, you ever hear about the guy who stole a suitcase in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and inside was a live bobcat? That was one of mine.”). Well, okay, Dean thought: Jack was just a kid. Cas was a little warier, a little stiffer, but Dean could see him defrosting. Starting to smile at Gabriel’s jokes. And again: okay. Gabriel was his brother. Dean couldn’t exactly blame him. Even if he knew they were both going to get their hearts broken when Gabriel left again. But Sam –

Sam and Gabriel were thick as fucking thieves. Time and again Dean walked in on them reading in the library, bickering over translation work (“You’re telling me I’m wrong? I _knew_ Ovid. Guy was a freak, by the way.”), sorting through the jars of herbs they’d dug out of the cabinets. Once he passed by the war room and saw the two of them sitting at the table, not saying a word, and then Sam laughed and Dean realised with a cold, creeping feeling that they _were_ speaking to each other. Just not out loud.

“I don’t know,” said Sam, when Dean brought it up. “I guess, uh – I get it, that’s all. Not being like your family – not fitting in. Feeling like your only option is to run – even if hurts the people you leave behind.”

Dean said, “You were just a kid. You went to college. I got over it.”

Not that he meant it. Sam leaving for California was a wound that would fester till the day he died. But he figured the whole “working on your anger issues” thing included burying that particular hatchet. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to encourage Sam to find any kind of common ground with Gabriel. 

“Anyway,” said Sam, awkwardly, “we’re not – we don’t really do the telepathy thing that often. It’s just, after everything, I’d kind of like to put up some shields. You know? And he said he’d help.” He gave Dean a pleading look. “He does want to help,” he said. 

In light of which, when he got the call from Angie Arcand up in Canada about an unusual disappearance in St. Andrew’s, Ontario, a day after Cas and Jack headed out, Dean probably should have expected what was going to happen.

“Vampires,” said Sam. “You sure?”

“It’s what Angie said. Whole nest of them.” Sam made a face. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe she’s wrong. Said it’s just been family pets going missing up till now. Probably a rabid raccoon or something.”

“You want to drive up to Canada in the middle of January for a raccoon?

“Okay, first of all, it’s not really _Canada._ It’s like an hour from the border. And we owe her one.”

To which even Sam had to agree. Angie was a decent hunter – still green, but hell, everybody had to start somewhere – and when they’d met in Washington state two years ago, chasing a wendigo, she’d been a good ally to have at their backs. And who else was she supposed to call? Canada was a big country: hunters there were stretched thin at the best of times simply as a function of geography. Sam sighed. Then he said, “All right. I’m gonna go find Gabe. Ask him if he wants to come along.”

Dean stared.

“You’re kidding,” he said. “Right?” Sam’s lips pressed together. “You worried he might scratch up the sofa while we’re gone? Chew your slippers?”

“Don’t be a dick,” said Sam. “If he doesn’t want to come, no big deal. But it’d be kind of a jerk move to just leave him here on his own.”

 _This is not happening,_ Dean thought to himself.

“Man,” he said out loud. “I should’ve let you get a dog.”

* * *

He’d have fought harder, he thought to himself later, if he’d thought for a second that Gabriel was actually going to say yes. Surely he had better things to do. Drinking Dean’s booze. Watching porn. Plotting to drop off another bobcat somewhere. But when Sam brought it up over dinner, he looked positively enthused. Maybe he was going a little stir-crazy, Dean thought, and felt the faintest pang of sympathy in spite of his dismay. Still: tough luck. Not like Gabriel’s powers wouldn’t restore themselves eventually. Jack was human for good, no refunds or exchanges, and you didn’t hear him bitching about it.

They crossed the border around ten in the morning. It was a dull, gloomy, colourless day. The snow on the roads had piled up and melted over the past week or so and then frozen into ice, and more than once he felt the Impala veering dangerously close to a skid. The sky was heavy with the promise of more snow to come. _Like in that Jack London story,_ Dean thought. _With the guy who couldn’t figure out how to build a campfire._ He remembered uneasily that the guy had frozen to death in the end. To distract himself he turned up the radio. “Come _on,_ dude,” said Sam.

“What, you having menstrual headaches?”

“Screw you. I can’t even hear myself think.”

“You two ever consider couple’s counselling?” said Gabriel, from the backseat.

Dean opened his mouth to tell him where he could get off. At the same time Sam said, “Sorry, Gabe. Guess we’re all kind of on edge. It’s just crappy weather for driving.”

Dean stared at him. Sam leant back in his seat and pointedly closed his eyes. 

_Great,_ he thought. _Just great._

He squinted at the grey sky. He wondered where Cas and Jack were. What they were doing. If they’d finished the hunt and headed to Daytona or Disney World for a couple of days. _Must be nice._ Still, at least with Gabriel along for the ride they wouldn’t freeze to death. His powers weren’t that diminished.

And wouldn’t that be fucking peachy if Gabriel ended up bailing them out. Just the thought left a sour taste in Dean’s mouth.

He switched the station at random – landing on some generic Greatest Hits of the ‘80s stuff – and turned it up full blast. 

* * *

A few years ago, Sam and Dean had spent a rainy weekend forging Canadian firearms licences and registration cards. It wasn’t a perfect solution to the problem of Entering Canada When the Purpose of Your Visit is Killing Things – even Dean hadn’t dared bring along the grenade launcher, and if they ever ran into a more than usually curious border services officer, they were going to be in a shit-tonne of trouble – but they’d made half a dozen trips since then, and things had worked out okay so far. Angie looked sort of stunned as she watched them unload the trunk. “Is this stuff legal in the States?” she said.

“Uh, no,” said Sam. “Not really.”

They were parked in the gravel lot at the edge of the woods that bordered St. Andrew’s to the southwest. It was getting on towards half past one. Still no sun. A little snow had started to drift down. A sign on the far corner of the lot invited them to PLEASE KEEP OUR TRAILS CLEAN and warned them against camping overnight. Like anyone would want to camp out here, Dean thought, eying the huge black trees. He wondered without much interest if they were pines, or spruce, or what. Cas would have known.

They’d stopped in town first to pick up Angie and gas up the car and grab lunch. Even – especially – buried under three feet of snow, the downtown streets of St. Andrew’s were postcard-pretty: all neat little red-brick shops selling ice cream and books and antiques. The sheer corniness of it set Dean’s teeth on edge. While he sat in the parking lot of the pizza place they’d picked at random, waiting for Sam and Gabriel to come back with their food, a guy in his fifties or sixties, dressed in a bulky parka, came out carrying a stack of greasy boxes and opened the passenger side door of a Toyota minivan and set them down on the seat. Then – Dean blinked – he tramped over to the Impala.

Dean rolled down the window.

“Saw your plates,” said Parka Guy. His breath came out in a cloud. “You from Ohio?”

“Born and bred,” said Dean, making himself smile.

“No kidding,” said Parka Guy. “You –” A kid squalled from the minivan. The sound of it rang through the air. “I’m coming, sweetheart. That’s my granddaughter,” cheerfully. “We always do a pizza lunch on Saturdays.” He frowned into the car’s interior. “You folks don’t have a dog with you, do you? Or a cat?”

“Nope,” said Angie, from the backseat.

“Okay. Well, not to scare you – but be careful if you’re going anywhere near the woods, all right?” Dean fixed him with a wide-eyed tell-me-more look. Parka Guy said, “Might be a bear prowling around here. Couple of people’ve had pets go missing lately.”

“No shit,” said Dean.

Parka Guy breathed out a cloud of frost. “Hell of a thing,” he said. “You barely ever see them this far south. Me and Marie aren’t letting the cats out at all.”

He trudged back to the van. On the bumper was a peeling sticker: GRANDKIDS ON BOARD.

It was an hour and a half later – after some of the worst pizza Dean had ever forced himself to eat, and another battle with the ice-slick roads – that they reached the trailhead. “Hope you guys are okay with hiking,” said Angie, as they unpacked the car. “It’s like two hours from here.” She bent down and began untying and retying the laces of her left boot.

“Great,” said Dean. He peered up at the dark trees. He wondered if there actually were bears in there. Wondered why, if so, the bears couldn’t just eat the vampires and save everybody a lot of time.

What Parka Guy had said had echoed, more or less, what Angie had already told him over the phone. About half a dozen cats and dogs (and one pet rabbit) had disappeared from St. Andrew’s over the past two weeks. Two had turned up again – dead and mutilated. That by itself didn’t signify anything – it was as likely to be a bear, or some human psycho getting his kicks, as anything supernatural. Angie hadn’t paid any attention till she’d seen last Thursday’s news report.

Officially, Julia McGee, in her mid-thirties, spending a cozy winter holiday in one of Ontario’s tourist traps with her boyfriend, was missing, not dead. According to the boyfriend, she’d walked out the front door of their B&B for a smoke last Wednesday evening. Nobody had seen her since. Despite the concurrent disappearances of Fido, Sparky, and Mittens, the Niagara police were treating the case with the wait-and-see attitude they usually adopted when people vanished without leaving behind either a pool of blood or a ransom note. It was, after all, a hell of a lot likelier that Julia had impulsively gotten on the evening bus to Hamilton than that she’d been carried off by somebody – or something. But the coincidence had been just weird enough that Angie had started digging.

Julia’s boyfriend was a dead end. Wouldn’t talk. But she’d got in touch with a guy who’d found the body of his neighbours’ Pomeranian in his flower bed, and everything she’d drawn out of him – the bite marks on the body (human-sized, but weird-looking: similar to a snake bite), the footprints in the snow nearby (apparently human) – pointed to a vamp attack. And a few days’ scouting in the woods had confirmed it. Angie couldn’t say why the vamps had been sticking to animals. But by last Wednesday night, she guessed, they’d been jonesing for the good stuff. Human blood. One of them must have pounced on Julia as she was coming or going.

It was reasonable a theory as any. And in a way it was good news. Not many nests would have moved into a town of less than fifty thousand people and started binging on family pets like they were crab legs at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Either these guys were newbies who hadn’t figured out that the first rule of Vampire Club was that you didn’t let the humans know about Vampire Club, or else they thought mere mortals were too dumb to notice anything out of the ordinary. Sloppy, in either case. Sloppy enough to get caught. Sloppy enough, hopefully, to be taken by surprise.

But it didn’t make what they were doing any less ugly. While the four of them were taking a break under the shelter of a huge double-topped tree, drinking coffee from the thermos Angie had packed, Dean looked over and saw Gabriel digging idly with his bare fingers in the snow. He was on the verge of saying something – if Gabriel was bored, he was welcome to fuck off – when suddenly Gabriel held out his hand. In his palm was something dark. A hank of hair, clotted with frozen blood.

Human hair.

“Yeah,” Sam said to Dean. “It’s just a raccoon.”

“I said it _might_ be a raccoon.”

“You said it was _probably_ a raccoon.”

“How exactly did you manage to stop the Apocalypse again?” said Gabriel. Dean glared at him. He wished Gabriel would keep his mouth shut – or better yet, flap his wings and fly away back to Bora Bora. It wasn’t that Dean didn’t want a third wheel. He liked hunting with Cas and Sam. Or Jack and Sam. Gabriel and Sam, not so much. Especially with how, when Sam picked up the hair, looking green around the gills, Gabriel shot him an odd, sympathetic glance – and Sam saw, and gave a short nod. Hunting with Gabriel and Sam, Dean thought to himself, was starting to feel like being at a party where everyone else knew each other, and he was on the outside of the circle, trying to find a way into the conversation.

“Definitely not a raccoon,” said Angie. As if that was a helpful contribution.

By the time they caught sight of the cabin, on the far side of a smallish clearing, the snow was falling thickly. Like being on the inside of a snow globe, Dean thought to himself. They sank down in the snow a couple of yards back from the edge of the trees. This time of day, the vamps were probably still asleep – but no reason to take chances. Sam said, quietly, “Fifteen minutes?”

Dean nodded. They’d been walking a good forty minutes since their last break, and they were all, except for Gabriel, panting and sweaty from wading through the snow. Going in before they’d got their breath back would be suicidal. He dug his phone out of his pocket and pulled off his right glove. Instantly the cold bit into his hand. It was twenty-seven below according to the illuminated sign in front of the Ford dealership they’d passed on their way to the woods: about seventeen below according to his phone. Cold enough, anyway. His battery was down to six percent. He remembered from a hunt in Colorado a few years ago that this kind of cold was hell on smartphones.

 _found vamp nest,_ he sent to Cas. _should be done before tonite_

_ur hunt going ok?_

He waited a minute or two, hoping for an answer. None came. His fingers were numb. He put his glove back on. It occurred to him that this was the longest he’d gone since the spring without talking to Cas. 

“Okay,” said Sam. “We’ve got another hour of daylight. Give or take.”

“Think it’ll be enough?” said Dean.

Sam considered. That was one of the good things about Sam, Dean thought: as much as they bitched at each other sometimes, when it came down to it, he was all business. 

“Should be,” he said. “We’re gonna take ‘em by surprise, right? In and out.”

“In and out,” Dean agreed.

“Okey-dokey,” said Gabriel. “So – we doing a buddy system, or what? Dibs on the smart one.” He winked at Sam.

“How about you shut the fuck up?” said Dean. “Huh?”

His voice was strained. But he didn’t have the patience for Gabriel’s bullshit at the best of times. And it was pretty fucking tactless, he thought to himself, to be cracking jokes when of all of them Gabriel had the least to worry about. Not like a vampire was any match for him even now. Whereas if Dean or Sam or Angie got unlucky, made even the tiniest mistake, they’d be dead.

He shoved down the memory of what had happened in the other world. Nobody was going to die. Obviously. It was just the principle of the thing. 

* * *

Up till midway through their raid on the cabin, Dean was – all things considered – feeling pretty good. Not perfect: he’d bashed his left shin on something, and he could already tell it was going to hurt like a motherfucker for the next couple of days, and he was freezing – the things that stalked the night didn’t believe in space heaters. But they’d got the drop on the nest, bursting through the door and into the filthy, cobwebby main room – crammed full of broken-up packing boxes and old bottles and rusty folding chairs: he wondered if squatters or junkies had used it once upon a time – and the five vamps had started awake (he counted them in a glance), and almost before they were springing into action he was charging forward, swinging the machete, not thinking about Gabriel or the vamps in the other world or anything else, and in about thirty seconds one of the vampires was dead on the floor, recipient of the Queen-of-Hearts treatment: _Off with his head!_

He wanted to laugh out loud. Nothing measured up to this. Not just the adrenaline rush – you could get that from a rollercoaster – but the knowledge that this, here, was what he was meant to be doing. That very few people _could_ do it, and he was one of them, and – whatever else he might fail at – he was doing it goddamn well, thank you very much. Nothing else made him feel quite as assured of his own competence, his usefulness to the people around him.

Somewhere behind Dean Angie grunted and her machete _thwacked_ into something. He sucked in a breath of the icy air –

And Gabriel barked: “ _Sam!”_

And Dean’s heart stopped beating.

One of the vampires was on top of Sam, pinning him to the floor. There was blood around her mouth and blood on Sam’s face and in his hair. Gabriel lunged at the vampire. A scream rang out and then abruptly cut off. Dean didn’t see what happened. He was back in the Morehead Tunnel, in the darkness that was full of the smell of rot and blood, and the world was coming apart. When he came back to himself he was on his knees next to Sam. A low meaningless croon was coming from his mouth.

“Hey, hey. You’re okay. Come on, look at me. You’re okay –”

Sam’s head moved. Dean’s stomach lurched. His right ear had been more than halfway torn off, leaving a raw, bloody wound.

“Hey, Sammy, that’s right. That’s right. Look at me –”

“Get out of the way _,_ dammit,” somebody said. Dean’s head snapped up – ready to fight – and he found himself looking into Gabriel’s face. “Vamps are dead,” he said. “ _Move_.” And just then Gabriel – smug, slimy, self-absorbed Gabriel – was Dean’s favourite person on Earth, because he was crouching down, cradling Sam’s face in his hands, and blue light was flaring underneath his fingers.

Sam said, “Gabe – don’t – don’t –”

“Shut up,” snapped Gabriel, and Dean said, “Sammy, let him do his thing.”

Sam stared up at Gabriel. Something was passing between them, Dean realised. More psychic stuff. Sam – thank God – nodded. Gabriel bent down –

And then he reeled back, looking punch-drunk. Sam’s face was still white. The wound around his ear had sealed itself up. But not the scratches on his neck and hands – not the wetness spreading through his shirt where the vamp had torn his coat open.

“That’s all I can do,” Gabriel said. “He’ll make it. But I’m not strong enough to heal him completely.”

“Oh shit,” said Angie. There was blood all over her coat and jeans. She looked like she was auditioning for _Carrie_. “Oh my God. Should we take him to the hospital? Say it was a dog attack or something?”

Dean wanted to scream. Wanted, shamefully, to cry. And then what always happened at times like this happened again. It was like he was two people. The Dean who kicked ass for a living, and the Dean who still just a scared kid worried sick about his baby brother. And the first Dean, the Dean who’d taken on the Mark of Cain and faced down Death and driven into Stull Cemetery, took one look at the other guy and said, _How about you sit this one out, pal?_

“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “He could be turned. We don’t know if they got blood in his mouth. You want him to wig out in the middle of the ER?” Angie was speechless. It occurred to him that she was barely twenty years old and also scared out of her mind. But he didn’t have time to feel any sympathy. “We need to get to someplace safe,” he said. The cabin was like an icebox. They’d roughed it before, but not often in temperatures as low as this. And they were totally unprepared – no firewood, no water, all the first aid stuff back at the car. “We gotta watch him. Where are you staying?”

“I’m not staying anywhere. I’m camping in my van.” She bit at the cuticle of her right index finger. “There’s, uh – there’s a place for sale north of downtown. Lund Crescent. I saw the sign on my way in.”

“Fine,” Dean said. To Gabriel he said, “We’ll finish up here. You okay to fly him to the house?” It tore at his heart to leave Sam in Gabriel’s hands, to leave Sam in anyone’s hands but his own, but neither he nor Angie could carry Sam all the way back to the car. And they needed to get him out of there.

“Sure.” Gabriel was sneering, but his voice was brittle. “Gonna be a bumpy landing, though.”

At the same time Angie said, “What do you mean, finish up?”

Dean breathed out through his teeth.

“If he’s turned,” he said, “we’re gonna have to cure him. And if we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna need the blood of the vamp that attacked him. We gotta bleed her before she freezes solid.”

Any other circumstances, there would have been something a little funny about watching Gabriel heft Sam up in his arms as if he weighed nothing at all. But not now. Gabriel wavered on his feet – and then they were gone. Angie stared at the place where they’d been standing. (They’d skimmed over the explanation of what, exactly, Gabriel was.) Dean set his jaw.

“Okay,” he said to Angie. “Let’s get to work.”

The light was fading: the sky outside the single window was turning a bruise-like purplish-grey. They found a Coleman lantern and got it going. It cast a stark white light and made long, sharp shadows. He and Angie breathed out white clouds while they hefted up the vamp that had gone after Sam. Dean’s stomach turned unpleasantly. He considered himself a tough customer – tough enough, anyway – but this was something else. There were long, bloody gouges all over her face and neck. As if Gabriel had tried to rip her apart.

At least he’d had the sense not to vaporise her. They tipped out the dregs of the coffee in Angie’s thermos and washed it out with snow and used that for a container. The job done, Dean turned to Angie.

“You okay for a couple more minutes?” he said. She blinked at him. “We, uh, we never found a body,” he said. “Might be stashed somewhere. Root cellar or something.”

She gave a stiff little nod.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, of course. Or – oh God. You don’t think –?”

The possibility floated between them: too fragile to be spoken out loud. But tempting. If they could get one big win: find Julia tied up in a cellar or a shack like a girl in an old comic book, miraculously still alive, and bring her back to safety –

“Worth a shot,” said Dean. “You want to take the inside? See if there’s a trap door under any of this shit?”

The temperature was dropping. He stamped his feet as he went out into the snow. It was nearly dark. People always said how quickly the sun set in the tropics: turned out it set pretty fucking quickly this far north, too. The beam of his flashlight looked pale and watery as he swung it ‘round, looking for the hump of an icehouse or a root cellar, the boxy shape of an outhouse. The dead silence gave him the creeps. _What’s the matter, son?_ A memory drifted up from the depths of his brain of his dad standing over him – he was young enough yet that he didn’t even come up to John’s shoulder – as they broke the earth on a grave. _You’re not scared of the dark, are you?_

_No, sir. Not me._

He kicked the snow off a likely-looking shape and swore out loud at uncovering a massive, rotting stump. The snow seemed to swallow up the sound.

“Hey Julia!” he yelled. “Julia McGee! We’re here to help you! Call out if you can hear me!”

Then he heard a cry from the cabin.

Angie was standing in the doorway. Her face was greenish-grey in the beam of his flashlight.

“Oh Jesus,” she said. “Come and see. Oh Jesus.”

Dean’s heart sank into his guts as he walked back inside. A body, he thought, would have been almost easier to bear. Easier to look at. What Angie had found was a white leather box about sixteen inches long by twelve inches wide, and maybe ten inches high. Somebody’s jewellery box, he realised. It was lined with pink velvet. But the trays had been taken out. Instead it held an ostrich leather wallet, and a silver charm bracelet, and a human heart, frozen solid like a ribeye steak.

“You think it’s hers?” said Angie, shakily.

Dean made himself pick up the wallet.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say so.”

A driving licence: Julia McGee, brown hair, blue eyes, not an organ donor. ( _Well,_ he thought morbidly, _not voluntarily, anyway._ ) Mastercard and debit card and half a dozen customer loyalty cards. A neatly folded receipt for a hair salon. Three twenty-dollar bills. Worst of all in its way, a little list, written in purple ink: _books read this year_. _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The Price of Salt. The Awakening –_

A whole life reduced to somebody’s sick souvenir. A hunting trophy.

He dropped the wallet back into the box.

 _Sorry,_ he thought to Julia’s ghost. _At least we got the bastards._

* * *

It was getting on towards eight by the time they pulled into the driveway of 14 Lund Crescent. It would have been sooner if Dean hadn’t taken a detour through the drive-thru. And if Angie hadn’t had to stop three times to be sick. As soon as they got through the front door she bolted for the downstairs bathroom, leaving Dean with the thermos and the McDonald’s bag and the first aid stuff he’d grabbed from the trunk. He found the kitchen and plugged in his phone (totally dead: he hoped Cas wasn’t trying to get hold of him) and put the thermos in the fridge. The world’s grossest leftovers. The McDonald’s bag he left on the counter. What he could see of the snow in the backyard, through the big French doors that opened onto the deck, was dark orange in the light of the neighbouring streetlamps.

He went upstairs. There was no furniture in the house. Must be a new-build. But there was power and water, and the radiators were humming. Well, you couldn’t very well keep the heat off in cold like this: not unless you wanted burst pipes.

“What is it with you and vampires, huh,” he heard Gabriel saying, as he came to the master bedroom. Dean pushed open the door. Sam was lying on the floor. Gabriel was sitting next to him. He’d taken off his jacket and put it under Sam’s head. “Seriously,” he said. “Is this some kind of fetish for you? Being eaten? ‘Cause if you’re into that, fine, but I already reattached your ear.”

“Shut up,” said Sam. Not bitchily. As if he was trying not to laugh. Then he glanced up. “Oh, hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Dean. “How you doing?”

“I’m okay. Got a bitch of a headache,” said Sam. Probably concussed, Dean realised: the vamp must have slammed his head into the floor. The thought of any kind of head injury made Dean feel a little bit queasy. But Gabriel had done what he could: he had to believe that. “Seriously, man, I’m _fine_ ,” as Dean knelt down and pushed back his hair. The skin around his ear was pinkish and shiny. “Come on.”

Dean made himself pull his hand back. “You thirsting for blood? Or Kristen Stewart?” Sounding stiff even to himself. Like a character in the black-and-white sitcoms he used to watch as a kid. _Yes sir-ree, everything’s okey-dokey here._

But Sam grinned anyway. “Thirsting for a beer, maybe,” he said.

“All right, well – you make it through the night un-vamped, I’ll buy the first round. Deal?”

“Dude. I had a vampire rip my ear off. _Whatever_ happens, you’re buying.”

The bedroom had its own attached bath. He went in and put the first aid kit on the counter, keeping the door cracked open in case of – well, he wasn’t sure, exactly.

“You know, if we’re gonna celebrate, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a couple bottles of Dom stashed somewhere,” said Gabriel. 

“You willing to share?” said Sam.

“Maybe. When you can see straight again. _If_ you ask nicely.”

Dean hissed in pain. The gash on his shin was worse than he’d thought. He gagged at the smell of his own blood. Made him think of the hair they’d found in the woods. Of Julia’s heart.

He was shivering a little by the time he finished up and pulled his jeans back on. Something about treating his own wounds made him feel lonely. Like when he’d been a kid alone on the road, before he’d gotten Sam back, sleeping in his car, making do with his tape deck for company. Nowadays he almost always had either Sam or Cas or both of them to lend a hand. _Going soft_. Well, maybe so. If you weren’t allowed to go a little soft by the time you were almost forty –

The food was still warm when he got downstairs. But his appetite was M.I.A. – had been ever since the cabin. Picking up dinner, he admitted in the secrecy of his own head, had been a way of proving something to himself. Like when he’d been in third grade, the only one to take up Lucas Hale’s challenge to pick up a worm and eat it, and afterwards they’d been clustering around him, chanting, _gonna puke gonna puke gonna puke,_ and he knew if he let them go on that he _would_ : so he’d opened the lunch he’d packed and took a bite out of his peanut-butter sandwich and forced himself to swallow.

Real goddamn mature. 

He checked his phone. The battery had crept up to eight percent. The only messages were from a hunter he’d met in southeast Texas, asking about werewolf lore, and from Mary, sending a video of a cat trying to climb a Christmas tree. Nothing from Cas or Jack. He typed a message to Cas explaining what had happened at the cabin. 

No response. Prickling unease crept up his spine. Must be out hunting. Cas would never leave his message unanswered. He’d know what it was doing to Dean – having to wait and watch.

 _It’s not a death sentence,_ he told himself sharply. _You got through it, didn’t you?_

He poked around the kitchen, opening and closing the big stainless-steel fridge, eyeing the electric stove, inspecting the sink with its garburator and detachable sprayer. In the corner by the fridge was a door. He opened it, wondering if it led to a basement, and found himself in a pantry nearly the size of his bedroom in the Bunker, with built-in shelves and a huge chest freezer that looked like it would hold half a cow. _Lifestyles of the rich and famous,_ he thought to himself, and whistled.

There was something a little eerie about a house without any furniture in it. He stood at the breakfast bar, staring at the empty places where the dining table and chairs would go, picking at his Quarter Pounder and fries. Angie emerged from the bathroom, looking peaky, and went upstairs. A few minutes later he heard the floor creak and glanced up to see Gabriel.

“He okay?” said Dean.

“No,” said Gabriel, “he’s climbing out the window, so I figured this was a good time to come hang out with you.”

“You know what, Gabriel, fuck you.”

“Don’t you wish.” Gabriel picked up Dean’s chocolate shake and slurped at the straw. “He’s fine. Took a couple of Tylenol. He’s asleep.”

Dean peered at his phone again. No new messages.

 _Cas, man, check your goddamn phone._ Florida was in the same time zone, and anyway, Cas didn’t sleep. He pulled up the number of the phone they’d given Jack and typed: _everything ok with u guys? txt me back_

No answer.

“Sam’s gonna be okay,” said Gabriel.

Dean didn’t say anything. What he wanted to say was, _Have you heard from Cas?_ Maybe, he thought, maybe Cas and Jack were in trouble. Maybe Cas hadn’t looked at his phone because he was fighting for his life against the wyvern. But if Cas _was_ in trouble, and if he _had_ been in touch over angel radio, Gabriel would probably have said something. Something like, “I’m going to Florida to bail out my brother and nephew: see you bozos later.” _Maybe,_ he thought, _Cas just wants a break from me for a while._ He didn’t think he was imagining the thing growing between them – slow and soap-bubble delicate. But after all the false starts, all the times he’d second-guessed himself – after the Thing with the Theatre Tickets back in November – maybe Cas could be forgiven for wanting a couple of days without him.

Gabriel set down the empty paper cup.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll grab the sleeping bags from the car. Call you if anybody starts sprouting fangs.”

Dean stayed in the kitchen for another fifteen minutes or so, taking mechanical bites of his burger. Then he crumpled up the bag and went upstairs. The door to the first bedroom on the left was closed. Angie must have taken it over. He pushed open the door to the master bedroom. Sam was asleep. He was lying on his back, his skin almost colourless in the winter moonlight.

 _Please._ Dean didn’t know who he was praying to. _Don’t let him go through what I went through. Please._

Gabriel was sitting next to Sam, his back to the wall. His face was expressionless. As if he couldn’t be bothered pretending to be human when there was no one around to see. Dean wondered what sort of thoughts might be going through his head. Wondered why, when Gabriel could have been anywhere in the world, he’d settled for spending the night sitting on the floor of an empty house, at Sam Winchester’s bedside. And wondered, too, whether he really wanted to know the reason.

It was a quarter to nine. But he wasn’t twenty years old anymore – and trudging through the snow for two hours each way would have been a hard day’s work even twenty years ago. He arranged his gun carefully under the other sleeping bag, the way he always did when they had to camp out, and lay down and stretched himself out. Gabriel must have known there wouldn’t be any question about where he’d be bunking. As he drifted into sleep he kept his eyes on his brother.

The next thing he knew, it was half past eight in the morning and somebody was ringing the doorbell.

* * *

“I don’t _believe_ this,” said Dean.

He and Gabriel were crouched on the stairs, out of sight of the front hall window. Taking cover. Angie, so far as he knew, was still asleep. Standing on the doorstep, smiling, a hat with huge furry ear flaps jammed over his head, a deranged-looking poodle bouncing around his legs, was Parka Guy.

“Maybe he wants to share God’s plan for us,” said Gabriel. 

“Do they even have those freaks here?” Gabriel shrugged. “He’s not leaving,” said Dean, peering through the window.

“Mm. We gonna open the door?” said Gabriel.

Dean was about to say no. Parka Guy could, as far as he was concerned, take a flying leap. But – and there, as the man said, was the rub – there was just the barest possible chance that it might be something important. He didn’t think anybody had seen them in the woods yesterday – or had time to find the carnage at the nest. But if somebody was looking for them – if the police were looking for them – then they needed to know sooner rather than later.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

“Okay. Uh, how we playing this? House inspectors? Bisexual foursome moving into our dream home?”

“You keep your friggin’ mouth shut,” said Dean, “that’s how we’re playing this.” And he yanked the door open just as Parka Guy jabbed the doorbell again. A shower of new snow fell down.

“Morning!” said Parka Guy. The poodle barked and sprang at Gabriel.

At the same time, another possibility – a possibility he would have considered before, if he hadn’t been half-asleep – occurred to Dean. Something his dad had once said came back to him. _Once a vampire has your scent, it’s for life._ There was no reason, he realised, to think that all the vampires had been clustered at the nest. Maybe one of them had been in the woods. Or at the Boston Pizza with its granddaughter. Had watched them come and go and mused to itself how it was going to get revenge.

“Guess I should introduce myself. I’m Dale,” said Parka Guy, “Dale McLean. I was walking Bella here and I saw your car in the driveway. She’s a real beauty.”

 _Okay,_ thought Dean. _Probably not a vampire._ Dale had let go of the poodle’s lead. Gabriel picked it up. He was scratching its head.

“Guess you guys haven’t been up here in the winter before, eh?”

“What, uh, what makes you say that?”

“This kinda cold, you’re gonna want to keep her in the garage,” said Dale, gesturing towards the Impala under her blanket of snow. “Don’t know if she’ll start for you after a night out in this.” Dean winced. “I’ll give you my number. Or – I guess you haven’t got your phone handy.” An iPhone with a cracked screen was suddenly shoved into Dean’s hands. “You give me yours and I’ll text you and then you can call me later if you need a boost, all right?”

Dean blinked.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Aw, it’s no problem. Don’t want you folks stranded your first day here. Well, second day, I guess.” He squinted past them. “Where’s all your furniture?” he said.

“It, uh –”

Gabriel – the poodle lolling in his arms – elbowed himself forward.

“Our movers got held up at the border,” he said, with all the smarmy slickness Dean remembered from Crawford Hall. “Paperwork issue.”

“Aw hell,” said Dale. “Sorry to hear it. Hope they don’t keep you waiting long. You didn’t want to go a hotel? There’s a Super 8 on Hailey Avenue. They got a breakfast buffet.”

Dean heard himself saying, “Well, we thought, uh, the house is ready, and – we had sleeping bags. In the car.”

“We’re big camping people,” said Gabriel. The poodle, Dean noticed, had apparently passed out from sheer bliss. Its pink tongue protruded from its mouth.

“Us too,” said Dale. “Used to take the kids up to Muskoka every summer.”

“It’s, uh,” said Dean, “it’s why we moved here. The lakes.”

“Great country for it,” said Dale. Then he said, suddenly, “Aw jeez _._ What’d you do to your leg?”

Dean glanced down. A bloody patch was spreading through the fabric of his jeans, over his shin.

“Tripped on the stairs,” he said, straight-faced.

* * *

Afterwards, standing in the front hall, Dean snapped at Gabriel: “Couldn’t you have whammied him or something?”

“You _want_ me mind-controlling civilians?” Gabriel frowned. “I was trying to be nice _._ ”

“Oh, ‘cause you care so much about being nice to people.”

“Hey. I’m one of the good guys. I joined your little band of merry men, remember?”

“Yeah, after you fucked off on your dumbass revenge quest first. And then fucked off _again_ a week after we got back from the other world. Sure. You’re a real team player.”

Gabriel’s eyes glinted.

“What are you getting at, exactly?” he said.

It was then that a small part of Dean’s brain reminded him that Gabriel had once killed him over a hundred times just to prove a point. That one of Gabriel’s hobbies while in hiding had been torturing people who pissed him off. It suggested politely that this might be a good time to shut up. Dean considered that. He counted to ten. Then he told that part of his brain what it could do with itself.

“This whole thing,” he said, “tagging along on the hunt, playing nurse with Sam up there – I don’t know if it’s some kind of game to you, or what. But I know _you_. Soon as your powers come back all the way, you’re gonna be out of here. ‘Cause that’s what you do. And frankly – I don’t care. Hell, time comes, I’ll buy you a bus ticket. But the way you’re acting around Cas and Jack – and Sam –”

Gabriel took a step forward. The smirk had gone from his face. “Listen to me, you patronising son of a bitch,” he said. “You don’t get to decide who other people get attached to.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.” Gabriel cocked his head. “Mystery Spot ring a bell?”

“I was trying to _help_ Sam.” 

“Like hell. You were thinking about the big prize fight. About how maybe you could stop it from happening. So you wouldn’t have to watch. ‘Course, you could’ve just told us the truth about the Apocalypse in the first place, but you were too much of a goddamn coward.” His heart was thumping in his chest as he spat the words at Gabriel: the same kind of high he got from being in a fight, or hustling pool. “You leave for months,” he said. “No goodbye, nothing. Just a friggin’ note on the table. And then you’re back like nothing ever happened. And Sam, I don’t know if he’s deluding himself or what, but he’s falling over himself acting like you’re part of the family –”

Gabriel put up a hand.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I get it.” He was looking at Dean in a way Dean didn’t like at all. As if he could see right through him. “This isn’t about Cas,” he said. “Or Jack. It’s not even about me. Is it? This is about Sam.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t stand,” said Gabriel, “that you might be in second place for even one damn minute.”

Dean couldn’t speak. At last he ground out, “You are so full of shit.”

“You sure? ‘Cause the way you’re talking, Dean-o – I’ve heard it before. Right before a certain somebody announced he wasn’t going to bow down to a bunch of monkeys. _You don’t like sharing._ ” Gabriel smirked at him. “I will say this for you,” he said, “you let people into your super-secret club now and then. After they make it through the hazing ritual. Cas. Jack. But what you must have put that poor kid through –”

Dean punched him in the mouth. 

He didn’t realise he was going to do it until he was already drawing his hand back. In the back of his brain, the voice of reason, or the better angel of his nature, or whatever, observed, _That was a fucking stupid thing to do._ But –

His knuckles, which should have been broken, weren’t even scraped. He looked up at Gabriel.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

Gabriel took his fingers away from his lip. “You don’t say,” he said, bitterly. Sam’s voice floated up out of memory: _You’ve gotta stop breaking shit whenever you get mad._ Dean was about to say something – what, exactly, he didn’t know – when suddenly every thought was pushed out of his head. A sound had startled him. He stood still – listening.

Something _snapped_. Gabriel turned to him. It was, Dean realised with a chill, the sound of somebody breaking the lock on the French doors.

“Kitchen,” he whispered to Gabriel. “You okay to fight?”

“Like there’s another option here?” said Gabriel.

His sword was already in his hand. Dean mentally cursed the bright-and-airy ultra-modern layout that left them almost nowhere to hide. They crept to the arch that divided the living room from the kitchen – took one assessing glance – and burst in.

The vampire looked terrible. He had on jeans and a Fair Isle sweater, with rusty stains down the front. The skin on his cheeks and forehead was blistered and red. Dean felt a flash of instinctive pity. Walking through the winter morning, with the sun glaring off the snow, must have felt like being burnt alive. His mouth was open in surprise, his fangs showing. “Hiya, sunshine,” said Dean.

“ _You_ ,” he said, “what are you?” He stared at Gabriel. “I’ve never smelled anything like you before. Like you’re human, but –”

“I’m my own thing,” said Gabriel.

“Stop talking to him,” said Dean. To the vampire he said, “You weren’t at the nest yesterday.”

“No. I was in town. I got back this morning. I saw what you did.” His face twisted. “My family,” he said. “My parents. My sister and her husband. You killed them. All of them.”

“Yeah,” said Dean, “we did. ‘Cause you and your family _ate_ that poor woman.”

The vampire’s eyes were full of loathing. Dean knew, with a tired kind of feeling, where this was going: where it had to go. “Fuck you,” he said. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Whatever,” said Dean. “You guys were crappy vampires anyway. See, _smart_ vamps stay under the radar. They don’t move into little tourist-trap towns and chow down on kitty-cats. And they don’t eat people and keep the leftovers as a souvenir.”

The vampire hissed. And then – too quickly to consciously process – he was on top of Dean, snarling, and only instinct brought Dean’s hands up in time to save himself. The back of his skull cracked against the hardwood. “Fuck you,” the vampire spat, again. “Julia was my _wife_. I loved her. And she met – met _him –_ and he poisoned her against me. It was like she was a different person. She wouldn’t hunt. Wouldn’t drink from humans. And when Dad and I tried to make her see reason, she left us. Left me.”

Dean thought, _What the fuck?_

He thought, _Julia was a vampire too?_

Everything – the disappearance, the jewellery box in the cabin – clicked into place like the tumblers of a lock. He thought, _No wonder the boyfriend didn’t want to talk._

“I never gave up on her,” the vampire said. “Never. We hunted them for three years. And finally we found them here.” Dean bucked, trying to throw him off, but the vampire’s strength was like steel. “I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he said. “It was Marnie – my sister – who saw her in town. She brought her to the cabin so we could talk. That’s all I wanted. To talk. I told her we could forget the past,” with incongruous self-satisfaction. “I even promised to drink only from animals. But she wouldn’t listen. She wanted to stay with _him._ ”

“Son of a bitch,” said Dean. “That’s what this was about? You stalking your ex?”

The image of Julia’s heart appeared in front of his eyes. It made a sick kind of sense. Like a crummy sixth-grade Valentine. _My heart is yours!_ Only this guy was the class dweeb who’d resorted to sending a Valentine to himself.

The vampire bared his fangs again. “We were going to leave,” he said. “Another day or two. As soon as I killed him, too. But he had to suffer first. Had to know what it was like to lose her. Like I did.”

“And _now_ you’ve lost the rest of the fam, too,” cut in Gabriel. The light flashed on his blade. “Sucks to be you, huh?”

The vampire screamed. Gabriel’s blade, which should have plunged into his back, through his lungs, buried itself in his left shoulder, scraping against bone. Dean shoved him off. Impossibly, he was still alive. The sword that once upon a time had been capable of killing archangels had hardly even slowed him down. Dean spat, “Gabriel, what the _hell –_?”

But there was no time to talk. The vampire was back on his feet, springing at Gabriel, tearing at his face and throat. Dean grabbed the vampire and wrenched him away. For a second they were perversely, intimately close: the vampire’s breath was hot in his mouth and nostrils, full of the smell of iron. Then a sharp pain shot up through his face and it was all Dean could do to keep hold of him. The vampire’s teeth had torn a chunk of flesh from his right cheek. His gaze locked on the drops of his own blood spattering onto the floor.

 _Dammit,_ he thought, _I never even told Cas –_

“I’ll kill you,” the vampire snarled, “I’ll kill you –”

At the same time, another voice – the voice he trusted most in the world – barked:

“Dean – get away from him.”

He shoved the vampire hard to the floor. What happened next happened in flashes. The pop of a gunshot – the answering groan –

Even banged up and concussed, Dean thought to himself, Sam was a damn good shot.

Gabriel didn’t miss a beat. He’d retrieved his sword. Almost before the vampire started to scream, he was kneeling down: then the blade was at the vampire’s neck, sawing back and forth. He said to Sam, “You feeling left out, Rambo?”

“Heard the fight. Figured I’d come and save your asses.” 

“Thanks for that,” said Dean, raggedly. “Guess I owe you one.”

“I’ll put it on your tab.”

Dean felt himself smiling. He said, “You do that.”

“Well,” said Gabriel, standing up and wiping his blade on his jeans, “look at you. Still human.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Still human. I –” He broke off. “I need to sit down,” he said, woozily. “Oh man.” He blinked at Gabriel. “I think you owe me that champagne now,” he said. 

* * *

It took a good quarter of an hour to get Sam back upstairs and back in bed. To explain what had happened to Angie, who’d been on her way to the kitchen when she’d heard the gunshots. Dean put her in charge of guarding the outside door in the laundry room – he doubted any more vamps had survived, but he could tell she felt guilty over missing the fight – and came back into the kitchen to assess the damage. Nothing irreparable, he decided. He stripped off his shirt and ran it under the tap and started blotting the blood from the floor. Not that he really cared about saving the hardwood floors of the rich, but there was no point being a bigger dick than you had to be. Anyway, it felt better to be doing _something_.

He peered balefully at the vampire’s corpse. What were they going to do with it? They couldn’t exactly burn it in the backyard.

Then an idea struck him. He went into the pantry and looked at the huge freezer, making mental calculations. The vamp was a big guy, even without his head, but he’d fold up. Dean nodded to himself.

“Okay,” he said. He gave the top of the freezer a pat. 

Sometime later, while he was wiping dried blood from the baseboards, he became aware that Gabriel was watching him. He straightened up. “You need something?” he said. A little cautiously. He wouldn’t exactly blame Gabriel for holding a grudge over Dean trying to rearrange his teeth.

“What are we gonna do about the nest?” said Gabriel.

“Man, I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to go back one last time. Salt and burn ‘em.” He wondered where they were going to get enough firewood. And how they were going to avoid some winter hiker or birdwatcher seeing the smoke and poking around to find out what was burning. “You can’t –?”

“Nope,” said Gabriel. “Not for a couple of days, anyway. Right now I’m not much more than human.”

Dean sat down on the floor, leaning against the kitchen island. Between heaving the vamp into the freezer and bending down to clean, his back was starting to ache. After a moment Gabriel joined him. “Yeah,” Dean said. “What’s up with that, anyway?”

“You really want to know?”

“Well, considering you just about got your throat ripped out by John Hinkley Jr. there, I’d kinda like to, yeah.”

Gabriel seemed to think about it. He took a breath. “Okay,” he said. “You remember what – what Asmodeus did to me.” Dean nodded. He didn’t offer sympathy. It was the last thing he’d wanted, personally, after Alastair. “Truth is, I was already low on grace when he got hold of me. See, back at the Elysian Fields Hotel, when Lucifer showed up – I knew he was gonna kill me.”

“Right. And you set him up to knife one of your copies.”

“My favourite party trick. But,” holding up a finger, “he wouldn’t believe it was me unless I poured a couple pints of my grace into the copy. So –”

“Huh.” Well, Cas had told him that angels sensed each other on more levels than just the physical: it figured that a simple illusion would be about as convincing to Lucifer as a cardboard cut-out would be to a human. “And that grace – it didn’t grow back?”

“Nope,” said Gabriel. “Usually it’d restore itself, but you add in Asmodeus, and – well, you keep, uh – keep tearing pieces away, sooner or later there’s gonna be some permanent damage.” He shrugged. “It’s grown back partway,” he said. “For a while I thought all I had to do was wait it out. But it’s – I don’t know. Stunted. I’ll never be what I used to be. Last night’s little misadventure pretty much drained the tank.” 

Dean was at a loss what to say. He hadn’t guessed. Hadn’t really cared enough to wonder. But –

“Sam knows,” he said, in the end. A tiny, stupid part of him felt oddly stung that Sam hadn’t said anything during that brief conversation a few days after Gabriel had arrived. But then, it wasn’t Sam’s secret to share. Gabriel gave him a sharp glance.

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t tell him. Didn’t have to. The night after we iced the Dynamic Duo, he cornered me in the Bunker. Wanted to _talk_ about it. About what I was gonna do now. And – well –”

“You ran,” said Dean. In all fairness, he thought, if he’d been in Gabriel’s position, which he imagined must be a little like suffering an amputation or a brain injury, and somebody – Sam – had tried to make him talk about it, he’d probably have run, too. What Sammy didn’t understand was that not everybody wanted to talk about every goddamn thing. Some things you had to shoulder yourself. 

“Yep. I wasn’t gonna come back, either. Did the whole rage-against-the-Heavens thing. Didn’t work. Then I did the drowning-my-sorrows thing, which was fun, but you know, there’s only so many Mai Tais you can drink. And only so many bored guests at destination weddings you can screw.”

The last thing Dean wanted to think about was Gabriel’s sex life. “Okay,” he said. “You and Rowena had the world’s sluttiest summer vacation. So why’d you come back?”

Gabriel sighed.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “All those centuries I was hanging out on Earth, I was never really scared of anything. I mean, up till a couple of years ago I was the toughest thing on the surface of the planet. And now –” His face was bleak. “I’m gonna die,” he said. “Oh, stop freaking out,” as Dean opened his mouth. “I don’t mean right away. But I’ve got a lot of enemies. Something’s gonna get me. Maybe next year, maybe in a couple hundred years. But it’ll happen. And angels – we don’t get an afterlife. We bite the big one, that’s it. No postscript. So I got to thinking, now that my time on Earth has been involuntarily limited, what am I gonna do? What do I even _want_?” He counted them off. “My family,” he said. “My brother. My nephew. And –”

A pit opened in Dean’s gut.

“Sam,” he said.

“Bingo,” said Gabriel. “The one who got away. Or, more accurately, the one I never got at all. Till now, anyway.” He looked smug.

“Jesus Christ.”

“You’re seriously telling me you didn’t see it? We _clicked_. First time we met. We had _chemistry_.” Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Not much more to tell,” Gabriel said. “I woke up one afternoon, sobered up, and I talked to Rowena and she told me to get my ass back to Kansas. Chick’s big on tough love.”

 _Wasn’t that fucking thoughtful of her,_ Dean thought. To Gabriel he said, “So you’re what, gonna be a hunter now?”

“I prefer to think of myself as a freelancer,” archly.

“Whatever,” said Dean. “What I’m getting is, you’re not leaving.”

Gabriel gave him a tight sort of smile. “Disappointed?”

“You know, if you’d just said something –”

“Right, ‘cause you’re really my biggest fan. I figured I’d just stick around till it was too awkward to kick me out.”

“Awesome. _The Archangel Who Came to Dinner_.”

“You been watching TCM again? Anywho – this thing with Sam.” He seemed to be struggling to speak. “You’re not in second place,” he said – slowly, as if he had to force the words out. “I’m not Yoko Ono, okay? I’m not gonna break up the band. You’ll never be in second place as far as Sam’s concerned. ‘Course, it’d be a hell of a lot healthier if you were, occasionally, but I gave up trying to teach you two _that_ lesson a long time ago. Point is, I get it. I know where I stand.”

“Me and Sam –” Dean broke off. Moistened his lips. “It isn’t like that,” he said.

“Yeah, bucko, it is,” said Gabriel, giving him that unnerving, penetrating stare again. “It’s _exactly_ like that. But I’m still gonna take what I can get. For as long as I can get it.” He quirked an eyebrow. “Same goes for Cas,” he added. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

Dean wasn’t getting into that. Not with Gabriel, anyway. But in the meantime –

“Sorry about –” He nodded at Gabriel’s busted lip.

“Whatever. I’ll live.”

“Still.” He cleared his throat. “This thing with Sam,” he said, “you screw with him – I will kick your ass.”

“Sam’s a grown man, Dean. He doesn’t need you to sign his permission slips.”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “I know. And he’s still my brother. And he’s got the world’s biggest blind spot when it comes to you. So watch your friggin’ step. Okay?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You don’t change, do you?” he said.

They stayed sitting against the island. And strangely enough, Dean found, it was okay like this, the two of them together. Not friends. He doubted they ever would be. But okay, all the same. 

* * *

Afterwards, he swallowed a couple of painkillers – his face was throbbing – and set his phone alarm for noon. Not that he planned on turning into one of those depressing old people who dozed off in the middle of the day watching PBS, but after taking out a nest of vampires and making it through the bonus round, he felt he deserved a break. _Just till noon,_ he told himself.

Around half past twelve he woke to Gabriel shaking his shoulder. “You gonna sleep the day away, princess?” he said.

Dean scrambled upright. The other sleeping bag was empty. “Sam –?”

“Relax. He’s out picking up Chinese with your padawan.”

Dean nodded. Then he froze. There was a notification on his phone screen. _Missed call: Cas._ Two hours ago.

“I’m gonna,” he said, “gonna go and give Cas a call.”

“Super,” said Gabriel. “You do that.” As Dean took the stairs, Gabriel yelled after him, “If you’re having phone sex, go into the garage. I don’t wanna hear.” 

Dean ignored him. He was pulling up Cas’s number. Putting the phone to his ear. And then – his heart began to beat again – the ring cut off. “Hello Dean,” said Cas.

“Cas. Man, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“I’m sorry I missed your call,” said Cas. “Is Sam okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s okay. False alarm. Been a hell of a night, though.” He made himself slow down. Speak normally. “You guys?”

“We’re fine,” said Cas. “Both of us.” He sounded embarrassed. “My, uh – my phone fell in the swamp. So did Jack’s. I had to put them in rice.”

“Rice,” Dean repeated.

“The young woman we rescued from the wyvern said it would draw the moisture out. She also said not to turn them on for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Huh.” Dean cleared his throat. “I thought – I don’t know. Something happened.”

“No,” said Cas. “Nothing happened. Except to the phones. Dean, are _you_ okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

And he was.

“Cas, man,” he said, and this time, thank God, his mouth didn’t betray him, “when you get back – let’s do something. You and me.” It occurred to him, belatedly, that he had no idea what they were actually going to do. “Dinner. Or a movie. Something.”

“Okay,” said Cas. No hesitation. Dean smiled to himself. “I’d like that, Dean.”

“Yeah? Good. I –”

And that was when he heard the doorbell.

It was Dale. Still in his hat and parka. No poodle this time. He was holding a big casserole dish covered in foil, and a stack of paper plates and plastic forks. “Hey there,” he said. And then, “Oh my God, what happened to your face?”

“I, uh,” said Dean. “Tripped on the stairs again.”

“Aw jeez, you gotta get those looked at,” said Dale. “You’re gonna break your neck. My son-in-law does reno work. He’ll take a look. I’ll text you his number.” He hefted the casserole dish. “ _This,”_ he said, “is for you guys. I told my wife about what happened with your movers, and she felt just terrible. I mean, of all the things.”

Dean stared.

“We wanted to bring you some dinner. It’s macaroni casserole. Marie makes it for potlucks. You put it in the freezer and take it out when you want to eat and it’ll be ready to go. Just throw ‘er in the oven for forty minutes.” He grinned toothily. “You fellas got your freezer working?”

That was when Dean snapped into action. He said, “Dale –”

But it was too late. Dale was moving briskly past him into the front hall. No invitation needed, apparently. Cold resignation came over Dean. A mental picture, merciless in its clarity, had appeared before his eyes: the door to the pantry standing open.

 _For fuck’s sake,_ he thought to himself. When were they going to catch a break?

From the kitchen Dale called out, “Oh, you got one of those big deep freezes, huh. Wow. What’s this thing hold, like fifteen cubic feet?”

And then, exactly as Dean had known was going to happen, he heard the lid being lifted, and then a scream. The sound of footsteps. Gabriel saying, “The hell are you doing in here?”

Slowly Dean raised his phone to his ear.

“Cas,” he said. “I’m gonna call you back. Okay?”

END

**Author's Note:**

> That’s all, folks! Thanks for reading. Leave a comment if you enjoyed (or if you didn’t), or come say hello on [Tumblr](https://havendale.tumblr.com/).


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